by Cedric Nye
He stopped wondering about the wisdom of his actions when a palatial two-story house, with large, white columns, and a veranda that stretched across the entire front of the house came into view. Jango didn't know much about square footage, but he would guess that this house was the largest in the area.
The house that stood before him was much larger than any of the other stately mansions and sprawling homes that he had seen lining the Governors Highway. The enormous home represented the kind of money and power that only came with inherited wealth, and Jango instinctively distrusted anything that stank of privilege.
He pulled the car up the drive and onto a large, paved roundabout that encircled a huge fountain. Jango purposely pulled his car around so that it was facing back the way that he had come.
Jango noticed a hum. It was an undercurrent of noise, like a large motor running far away or underground. He noticed that the house had lights burning in some of the windows. These were the first electric lights that he had seen in months.
Jango swiftly put together the information and figured that the man must have a large, powerful generator running to have so many lights burning at one time. Jango knew a little bit about human nature, and he had a feeling that this man beside him in the car had lived his entire life hoping for something like the zombie apocalypse.
Jango knew that there were both good and bad people in the world, and he knew the limitations that each of those groups operated under. Good people respected the laws because they believed them to be correct, and they chose not to hurt people because they felt it was wrong. Bad people, on the other hand, the twists, they didn't hurt people because they were afraid of being caught. The people like that spent their days hoping and praying for a time when there was no law, for a time when they could go out into the world unchecked, and satiate every foul desire they had ever imagined.
Jango suddenly knew, without a doubt, that the man riding beside him was one of those twists, and that he meant him harm. But, with the long practice of an abuse survivor, Jango kept all of his thoughts and emotions from showing on his face so the man wouldn’t be on guard.
“So, you want to come in inside or what?” The man asked as he climbed out of the car.
“Yeah, yeah, I'm coming,” Jango replied.
Jango opened his car door and stretched, taking the opportunity to look around. He immediately noticed that the grounds of the house were plain and unassuming. There wasn't anything in sight to give him any information that could be of use. The very lack of personality, though, made him immediately think of masks and disguises, which only added to his feelings of unease.
He pocketed the keys to the car, pressed the button that locked all the doors, and closed his door tightly. He then walked around the back of the car, and closed the door to the passenger side where the man had just gotten out.
The man smiled again, and said, “Looks like you could use a new shirt, buddy. When we get inside, I can get you one.”
“Sounds good,” Jango responded.
The man turned and headed toward the enormous house, and Jango followed along behind him. When they were about fifteen feet from the house, he noticed the man reach into his right front pocket.
Jango had left his stick in the car, and he suddenly found himself wishing that he had it right then. In the absence of his stick, Jango silently pulled the spine cutter from its sheath on his belt, and held it in an icepick grip with the blade’s edge facing away from his hand.
Instead of attacking or pulling a weapon out of his pocket though, the man just seemed to fiddle around in his pocket. Jango heard a muted “thunk!” come from the front door and decided that the man had pressed some kind of automatic opener when he had reached into his pocket.
The man turned his head to look over his shoulder as he opened the door to the house, and said, “Well, come on in and make yourself at home.”
Jango allowed the adrenaline to begin trickling through his system as he stepped slowly through the door. The adrenaline flow started the process that would take him into his destroy mode. With his senses sharpened under the influence of adrenaline, he noticed a smell coming from Bernard, and it was a smell that he had been exposed to before.
When Jango was a teenager, the state had put him into the county hospital where they kept all the lunatics that the state system had chewed up and spit back out. The smell that permeated the air now was the same stench that had been exuded by a violent schizophrenic who had been locked-down in that hell hole, a man who would never be able to live out among people again. The man had been an eater of human flesh, and a killer of women and children.
Jango decided to finish the problem right then and there. Still holding his knife in an icepick grip, he threw a hard right cross at the back of the man's neck. He aimed his fist just to the left of the man's neck so that the blade would make contact with the man's neck just at the base of his skull.
Jango's powerful strike slammed the heavy, razor-edged blade through flesh, and between vertebrae. Jango felt the slight resistance of flesh, and then the wrenching force against the blade as it severed the man’s spinal cord. The man dropped to the floor and lay unmoving.
Chapter 3:
Some Seriously Sick Shit
Jango stared dispassionately at the unmoving corpse. The stench of twisted madness, blood, and loosened bowels rose from the man's body in an almost palpable miasma of degeneracy.
He suddenly felt an urgent need to find out what secrets this man had been hiding in his enormous home. He wiped his knife on the dead man's shirt, and then sheathed it. Jango felt the urge to go back to the car to get his stick, but he resisted the urge, and instead drew his pistol from under his left arm. A thought made him stop, and he reached down into the man's right pocket and removed what turned out to be a small remote device similar to what people used for their car alarms. It had two buttons on it, one red button, and one gray button. He decided to test it out before he went any further. Jango aimed the unit at the front door, and pressed the red button. He heard a “thump!” and he saw a locking mechanism turn as a large bolt shot home and sealed the door. He then pressed the gray button, and he heard the “thump!” again, and saw the locking mechanism turn back as the hefty bolt was pulled out of the wall. Satisfied, Jango pressed the red button again to lock the door, and pocketed the remote device.
Jango began to search the house methodically. He went from room to room, and opened every door that he came to. He checked every room, and everywhere that he looked, the place seemed to be just an unlived in space; almost as if it was a model of what a home should be. There was no sense of life, no feeling that anyone had ever lived there. The house felt like nothing more than a killer’s disguise.
Jango headed for the staircase that he had seen near the entryway to the front door, and when he reached the base of the staircase, he began climbing the stairs. Jango went up the stairs quickly, quietly wondering if there were any other threats in the home. He made it to the top of the stairs without incident, and looked down a long, brightly lit hallway.
Jango moved slowly and quietly down the hallway. He stopped to check each door that he came to, but the rooms appeared to be the same dead spaces as the rooms that had been downstairs. The rooms looked un-lived in and empty of personality, until he came to the door at the end of the hall. Jango heard muffled moans coming from behind the door, and he noticed that there were heavy hasps on the outside of it. Jango quietly cocked his pistol, and undid the hasps that held the door closed.
Jango slowly opened the door, and as he did, the soft moans grew louder. The sight that greeted Jango in that room froze the blood in his veins and the marrow in his bones. The room that he found himself standing in was a large room, easily 25' x 25', and every wall of that large room was lined with wire cages. They were the same kind of cages that people put their dog in when they are about to go on a long trip so that the dog would not be able to jump around in the vehicle. But instead of dogs being in the cages, the ca
ges were full of young girls. All of the girls in the cages were naked, and it appeared that the bottoms of their cages were lined with newspapers.
At a quick glance, Jango estimated that all the girls were around the same age. All of them were afraid, and they gazed at him with the middle-distance stare that Jango had worn on his own face when he was a child. He didn't know what he could do for the captive girls besides set them free.
Jango slowly made his way around the room, unlocking the cages one at a time. He noticed as he unlocked the cages that each girl had two round, plastic dishes in their cage. Jango groaned inwardly as he deduced that the dishes were for food and water. When he had unlocked all the cages, a quick head-count showed that there were 23 girls in all. None of the girls came out of their cages, and Jango cursed under his breath, knowing that they were shell-shocked and traumatized by whatever the twisted Bernard Banks had done to them.
Jango walked back to the doorway, and squatted back on his haunches. He was silent for a moment, thinking, and then he said, “That twisted mother-fucker isn't ever going to hurt you again. I damn near cut his fucking head off. He’s lying in a big ass pool of blood downstairs. It’s safe now.”
When he told the girls that their tormentor was dead, he saw a glimmer of hope in some of the girls’ eyes. One girl, a petite brunette with welts on her shoulders that looked like whip-marks, climbed out of her cage and stood up.
“Is that true, sir? Is…is The Killer dead?” The girl said.
He didn’t know why the girl called Banks “The Killer”, but he was pretty sure the man was dead. “Hell yes it’s true,” Jango said. “Hell, I'll bring his fucking head up here if you want me to.”
Jango didn't make eye contact with any of the girls, because he knew what it was like to be hurt, and scared. Eye contact at this point would come across as a threat. These girls were vulnerable and hurt, and he would be damned if he would add to their trauma.
Suddenly, the girl's eyes widened. Without thinking, Jango rolled forward, and drew his pistol as he did.
Jango came out of his roll on one knee, and pointed his pistol at the space behind where he just had been. There was a large man standing in the doorway who looked like a bowling ball with legs and arms. He was wearing a padded suit like dog trainers wear when doing protection training with guard dogs, and heavy gauntlets that covered the backs of his massive hands. The man held a large revolver in one beefy hand, and it was hanging at his side. The other hand was upraised, with a heavy, knotted cudgel gripped tightly in his fist. The man would have brained Jango if it hadn’t been for the girl’s reaction, and now the man would never get another chance.
Jango shot the large man just above his belt line, and watched as he dropped the cudgel and the revolver to double over and hold his stomach in agony. Jango rose fluidly to his feet, and walked over to the moaning man. Jango nudged the man's revolver to the side with his foot, and asked the girl whose widening eyes had warned him of the large man’s eminent attack, “Any more surprises you want to tell me about?”
Jango immediately felt like an asshole as he saw the fear written plainly on the girl’s features. Jango consciously made an effort to soften his face, and said to the girl, “I'm sorry, kid. I'm not mad at you.”
The fear on the girl’s face lessened, and she said, “No sir, there was never anyone else in the house. Not that I saw anyway. When Mr. Banks let people use us, he always took us to the other house, the one behind this house.”
The old, familiar pulse of madness began to beat in Jango's temples, and he felt the coldness of his zombie-hatred retreat, and his need for vengeance retreat as the fires of his childhood rage rose to engulf him.
“Used you, used you how? I mean, what was going on here?” Jango asked the girl in a voice that sounded like bones breaking and metal tearing.
“The other man, not this one, he has these fights out behind his other house. He has a big corralling cage set up where people fight the zombies, and if they win, they to get to do whatever they want with one of us.” She hung her head and continued in a quieter tone, “And that man, that man right there, he fought those zombies all the time, and he got to use us. He always made it hurt. He wears that suit, and he even wins against four or five zombies.”
Jango looked down as he heard the large man start to chuckle. He took a closer look at the man, at his shiny baldhead and the sex offender’s smile that was pasted across his sweaty face, and Jango made a decision. These girls were going to take theirs back.
“Any last words, fuck-stick?” Jango asked the gut-shot man. “If you want to pray, now is a good time to do it, because you are about to have some serious hurt put on you.”
The huge man laughed out loud, and said, “My Lord Jesus Christ absolves me of all my sins. So even if I die, I get to fuck little bitches like this for the rest of eternity. You can’t do anything to me. I’m The Killer, you pussy. Shit, you are one lucky punk-ass you were gone when Mr. Banks and me got back to the woods, ‘cause your ass was going to go in the Pit. He thought for sure you were going to turn into a groaner, but nope! You were gone when we got back.”
Jango smiled at the man, pulled his Spyderco knife from his front pocket, and opened it. He reached down and grabbed the big man by his right ear, and in one swift motion, he cut the man’s ear from his head, and tossed it onto his chest. The man screamed in a high falsetto note that made Jango smile, and the hot, acidic smell of urine filled the air as The Killer got his first taste of just desserts.
Jango leaned over the screaming man, and a maniacal grin spread across his face as he screamed along with The Killer. “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!” Jango screamed into the big man’s pain-wracked face.
Spittle flew from his lips as he shouted at the man in a woman’s voice that sounded like it was made of cyanide and sugar that had been laced with the patter of blood dripping on an abattoir floor, “This is the truth about The Killer, ain’t it, baby? You’re just a big old bag of screams under all that big, bad muscle, ain’t you?” Jango asked in the albino woman’s violence-soaked voice. There was the hard twang of the Deep South threaded through her poison croon as Jango spoke. “It ain’t how hard you are when you’re standing over top of someone that really matters, you fatty-fatty kiddie fucker. It’s how hard you are when someone’s standing over top of you that shows what you’re made of.”
Jango slapped the man on the wound that used to be an ear, then pulled the spine cutter from its Kydex sheath on his belt, and slowly turned to face the room full of girls, all of whom had fully come out of their cages by then.
Jango was in full destroy mode, and the harsh lines of his killing face caused the girls to shrink back in fear. He forced a smile onto his face.
“No, no, no, no, no, you don't have to be afraid of me. Now, I'm going to give you the option. You’ve got the choice. I've got two knives here, and if you want to, you can take yours back from this slimy, bald, sweaty pile of shit. All I ask is that you leave his brain and his spine alone. I want this pile of lunchmeat to be a zombie until the end of all things. He says his Lord will absolve him, well fuck that shit. He won’t get absolved if he doesn’t make the meeting. I will tie his wailing, undead ass up, and then lock him in a fucking closet.” Jango had spoken in his normal voice.
In Jango's mind, the only right thing to do as far as the girls were concerned was to let them take their pound of flesh from their tormentor; it was the only way that they could get back what had been taken from them. The simple truth was that no therapy or counseling session in the world would be as effective at that moment as what Jango had proposed to those girls. Revenge would go a long way toward healing their emotional trauma.
The brunette that had been the first to come out of her cage stepped up to Jango hesitantly. He flipped the spine cutter in the air, and caught it by the tip of the blade. He held the knife out grip first to the girl. “Have at it. Chop that wood, girl,” was all that he said to her.
Jango flipped the Spyderco up in t
he air the same way and caught it by the blade. He held it out in front of the remaining girls grip first, his eyes looking at nothing in particular. As the fat man’s screams began to fill the room, they cleaned the air better than any filter ever could, and some life began to come back into the girls' eyes.
A few of the girls looked at each other, and one pudgy blonde girl finally stepped forward, squared her shoulders, and took the knife from Jango's waiting hand.
One by one, the rest of the girls began heading toward where the big man lay screaming in agony as the girls took it all back. The meaty thump of blows and the hissing whisper of the blades cutting flesh and fabric combined with the fat man's hellish screams to create a symphony of righteous retribution.
Chapter 4:
An Army of Orphans
Several minutes after the man’s screams had stopped, the girls finished their therapy session. He turned back to look at the girls. They were coated in blood and gore of every description, but their clean white teeth showed, smiling through the bloody masks that they wore. Their smiles told him that given time, the girls would be okay. At least by Jango’s standards of okay.
“So how we all feeling?” Jango asked the girls.
A couple of the girls high-fived each other, and a few of them gave each other hugs. They were completely unselfconscious about their nudity, and they intuitively seemed to know that Jango was not a threat to them.
“So what really happened here?” Jango asked. “What's been going on? You said something about people using you.” Jango kicked the mutilated remains of The Killer and then continued, “You said this slimy sack of shit was one of them, but who else? Are there more? Where are they?” Jango’s questions came out rapid-fire in staccato bursts.
“Yeah, there’s more. There’re a whole bunch of the son of a bitches,” a muscular looking girl with purple hair said. “They had some kind of militia before those things started coming around. You know, those zombies. Now they just do whatever they want. We were all hiding out at the Armory because our teacher had taken us there. Mrs. Watson, she said we'd be okay because there was food there and it was supposed to be safe. Then Mr. Banks showed up, and Mrs. Watson let him in.”